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Member Blogs > Gothica BooksTrauma Reenactment in the Gothic Loop: A Study on Structures of Circularity in Gothic Fiction – Student Pulse

Ever since its original emergence, Gothic fiction has been shaped by a unique narrative direction that is often described by scholars and readers alike as retrospective, repetitive, or circular in nature. Gothic texts progress as if through a series of flashbacks, always reviving deeds of the past in order to point out a problem, which, however strongly rooted in some ancient heritage, prevails in the present and calls for immediate resolution. David B. Morris defines the typically Gothic vision of history as one where “the past interpenetrates the present time, as if events were never entirely the unique and unrepeated product of human choices, but rather the replication of an unknown or buried pattern” Morris 304. A similar view on progression is depicted, quite visually, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in which the very pattern chosen for the famous tapestry follows a similarly transgressive, circular direction, as described by the narrator of the tale:You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream. Gilman 9